LG 32GS95UE review: 480Hz OLED wonderland 

LG’s Ultragear lineup of gaming monitors has often been seen as some of the best around. Now, the Korean giant’s latest flagship offering is not only deeply impressive, but it might be the last monitor you ever need to buy. 

Sporting an OLED 240Hz 4K panel, and a 480Hz 1080p dual mode, the 32GS95UE seemingly ticks almost every box you want for a new, high-end monitor. But, don’t be fooled. If you’re running a setup that can push every pixel or frame, you might want to opt for something a little lighter on your wallet. 

The 32GS95UE has high-end specs, which demand high-end hardware to get the most out of the panel. If you don’t have at least an RTX 4080 or 4090-tier GPU, a lot of the value this monitor offers will be lost on you. But, if you do, it offers a wealth of delights. 

Key specs

• Screen size: 31.5-inches
• Panel type: OLED
• Resolution: 3840×2160, 1920×1080 (dual mode)
• Brightness: 275 nits
• Contrast ratio: 1500000:1
• Refresh rate: 240Hz (4K), 480Hz (dual mode)
• Response time: 0.03ms GTG
• Connectivity: 1x USB 3 (Type-B upstream), 2x USB 3 (Type-A), 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x 3.5mm audio out
• Price: $1399.99

Pros	Cons
Gorgeous OLED panel	No USB-C output
Perfect color reproduction	VESA mount can conflict with some monitor arms
Excellent HDR brightness
Dual mode is good in a pinch

Design

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The LG 32GS95UE is slick. There are no wild flourishes in its design that will make you want to buy another stand or seek out a VESA mount. The rear cover is made of black plastic, with two (fairly superfluous) LED panels. It also has a simple latching mechanism for the included stand, with the underside of the monitor housing a button to navigate the on-screen display, and a dual-mode toggle to enter the 1080p / 480Hz mode. 

The included stand latches on easily, and can give the monitor some swivel, tilt and height adjustment, with a fairly minimal impact on your desk compared to the Y-shaped stands you usually see on gaming monitors. It’s weighty, with a nice matte silver metal finish. 

There are no big gimmicks here light bright LEDs projecting onto your desk, it doesn’t look like a spaceship, it just looks like it fits in with most setups, which is very welcome. 

There’s an included cable management hole here, too, allowing you to tidy things up pretty easily. But, for this review, I hooked the monitor up to a VESA mount. The process of doing so wasn’t as straightforward as you might think, however. 

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A latch button for a stand comes out by a few millimeters, which interfered with the mounting of my monitor arm, so while screwing in the VESA mount was simple enough, the latch caused an uncomfortable moment of pushing it down by force to clear the button, which stood in the way.  

The controversial “anti-glare” panel 

The front of the panel has an “anti-glare” satin finish, which some might view as controversial. It really sits in between a glossy and matte finish. 

While some could argue that a glossy screen could bring out the deep blacks and make the panel’s contrast appear sharper, the matte finish also allows it to work well at diffusing any wayward light sources in a room.

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2023’s Asus ROG PG27AQDM had a glossy finish, but LG’s panel coating here is great, and despite using the monitor for over a week under a window, and with a monitor light bar, I had no issues viewing content, even when light directly faced the panel itself. 

Features

The LG 32GS95UE might just be one of the most feature-packed monitors on the market, sporting all the big flagship features you’d expect, FreeSync Premium Pro, G-Sync compatibility, HDR, and surprisingly decent in-built speakers.

Activating some of these features requires you to navigate LG’s slick OSD, which can be activated using a rocking button on the back of the monitor, and it’s super-easy to navigate. You’ll be able to tune peak brightness, set your dual mode functionality, activate HDR, and extensive OLED care features. 

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It’s the OLED care functions that you should pay the most attention to as you take it out of the box, the OLED screen move feature moves the display slightly at regular intervals to prevent burn-in on static elements, and the monitor has a screen cleaning cycle whenever it powers down or enters standby, which is similar to how LG’s OLED TV’s work. 

Resolution & refresh rate

Unlike most monitors, you can tune the 32GS95UE to the standard 240Hz 4K output, or choose a 408Hz 1080p output, and both look excellent, though, on a display of this size, the 1080p image quality is noticeably softer. You can also “emulate” a 24-inch and 27-inch monitor using the display too, but with black borders. 

240Hz is already a noticeable step up from the 144Hz standard of many gaming monitors, and the 480Hz mode makes for a wildly smooth experience. Simply put, moving objects are less blurry, and you can track them much more easily across a screen. 

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Just remember, that to make the most out of a 240Hz 4K panel, or 480Hz 1080p panel, you’ll want to achieve framerates to match that, meaning that the monitor is best paired with a high-end PC. But, for the console gamers out there, a PS5 hooked up via HDMI 2.1 with all the fancy HDR features turned on can also offer full 120Hz compatibility. 

Gaming performance

Given that there are dozens of ways of using the 32GS95UE, I put it to the test in a variety of games with different modes active. The first port of call was to activate HDR and spin up the neon-soaked streets of Cyberpunk 2077’s path-traced mode. Dogtown looks gorgeous, with beaming light sources perfectly capturing the gritty environment. 

Viewing angles also impress, with the single-player title looking just as good as it does on the LG C1 OLED TV, and far beyond any other gaming monitor I have used. Colors pop, lights are bright, and the level of small highlights that stand out has to be seen in person to be believed thanks to the levels of local dimming built into an OLED monitor.

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Second up is the SDR version of Metaphor: Refantazio’s demo, which looks gorgeous, though it lacked the HDR highlights, it still looks incredible onscreen, with the sharp Atlus UI basically popping out of the screen. 

I also tested Fortnite in several modes, including 4K at 240Hz and 1080p at 480Hz. Again, the bright, saturated colors of Fortnite lent themselves well to the strengths of the monitor, with the game looking sharp and great at 240Hz, 

At 480Hz, the experience just gets even better, with the real strength of the display being the fact that you have access to a high-refresh mode at the touch of a button, without the sacrifices of having to use a TN monitor like the Zowie XL2586X. 

This makes for a superior overall experience when compared to a dedicated 540Hz panel. There’s a noticeable increase with which refresh rate impacts accuracy, and in this mode, I attained more kills, and more direct hits on enemies.

Should you buy it? 

If you’re spending this much on a monitor, you have to consider the downsides of using an OLED as your main panel: Windows has a lot of static elements, and this increases the risk of burn-in, which can only be measured in years at this point. 

But, if it’s anything like the LG C1 OLED TV I’ve used for years in titles with a lot of static elements like Final Fantasy XIV, basic mitigations like lowering peak brightness or hiding your taskbar will do most of the work for you, with LG’s screen-cleaning tech doing all of the rest. 

The panel is the closest thing there is to a “perfect” gaming monitor right now — if it were not for the omission of a Type-C DisplayPort option on the panel, which would have been very welcome. 

Verdict – 5/5

The downsides of the LG 32GS95UE are fairly minimal in scope. It’s not the brightest monitor out there, it could have better connectivity, and it could be cheaper. The dual mode isn’t a gimmick, as long as you actually use your monitor in performance esports titles. But, if you don’t, there may be cheaper options out there on the market for you. 

But, when it comes to being an all-rounder high-end monitor, it won’t get much better than this. With no superfluous features, a slick design, and killer picture quality, it might just be the best single gaming monitor I’ve ever used.